Search

This book proposes and unpacks the construct 'Criticism against Northern Hegemony in the scholarly field of Comparative and International Education' as bringing together a number of related strands in the field and as showing a promising future trajectory for the evolution of the field, namely the affirmation of the Global South. This construct captures a significant amount of what leading scholars in the field of Comparative and International Education are currently engaged with. It also expresses a view of both the current epoch of education as well as of the societal contextual imperatives shaping education. Criticism against Northern Hegemony in the field comes to the fore in a number of related strands in the current discourse in the field. This scholarly book originates from the Research Unit of Human Rights Education in Diversity at North-West University, South Africa, where the author is affiliated. The book is grounded in the Creed for Human Rights. From this perspective, the book advocates for a new phase in the historical development of the field, with a focus on advancing the affirmation of the Global South as a central moral foundation. The author envisions that this shift will represent a significant advancement in Comparative and International Education, propelling it to an unprecedented stage of value and importance.

The objective of this book is to highlight the need and value of imbuing the dynamic intersections between education, human rights and diversity with perspectives from the Global South. The chapters approach key intellectual conundrums of the day from a Global South perspective to reflect a credible scholarly footprint in Africa and in the SADC region. This is deemed timely considering that the field is deeply embedded in western, Eurocentric and overall Global North dominance. This book will provide a Southern perspective on education and human rights in diversity by unpacking each of the following key areas in the intersection between education, human rights and diversity from a Southern perspective: comparative international perspectives, citizenship education, human rights literacies, human rights education pedagogy, learner discipline in schools, aggression and bullying in schools, addressing human trafficking by means of human rights education, social justice, and the decolonisation of human rights and human rights education.

Leadership in education has been demonstrated to make a measurable and significant impact on the success of schools and the achievement levels of learners. This book displays the scope and range of the emerging field of the scholarship of education leadership by means of chapters zooming in on various areas of research in the field. The ensuing chapters focusing on various areas in the field of Education Leadership scholarship are ordered in the following categories: chapters dealing with teacher leadership, school leadership, and mid-level leadership. The sections cover Collective Teacher efficacy in high-performing high schools in South Africa, leadership and leadership challenges of school principals of special schools, entrepreneurial leadership, perceptions of school staff and school governing bodies regarding the use and maintenance of ageing school facilities, and continuous professional development of teachers in Namibia. All the chapters employ a variety of research methods. The research reported on in each of the chapters does not only give clear indications as to how and where to improve practice but also opens vistas for new and future research, suggesting to scholars in the field promising ways to take the field forward with research critical to the continual advance and relevance of the field.

In the past ten years, the concept of education for sustainable development has become one of UNESCO’s key educational initiatives to address current global challenges. However, the attention was mainly devoted to primary and secondary education, and higher education was somewhat neglected. The primary focus on basic education has also diverted academic attention from the research exploring the relationship between higher education and sustainable development. Only recently has the academic discourse on this topic begun to gain ground. On that note, this book is meant to place higher education at the core of the necessary transformations to create awareness of more sustainable practices and policies.

This book addresses a perennial challenge to the success of the South African education system, namely, discipline. This volume steers the interrogation of discipline in a new direction, reflecting on ways in which recent research can benefit South African schools. This includes the need for alternative discipline that will enhance education. The scholarly contribution lies in its in-depth exploration of the relevance of research findings to South African schools and to the twenty-first-century socio-political environment. For the first time, scholarly interrogation of the issue of learner discipline in South African schools draws on indigenous knowledge systems. Its post-colonial and decolonial perspectives offer an ethical and moral compass for behaviour that could contribute to the well-being of South African society (and other societies similarly afflicted by anti-social behaviour). The book offers a range of perspectives on the debates on discipline and associated issues, and should stimulate future discussions on discipline and indiscipline at a time when South Africa and many other societies engage with the effects of social and political transformation. This scholarly book is aimed at academics and researchers. The contributors include philosophers, moralists, corporativists, education law specialists, curriculum specialists, specialists in education and culture, advocates of ubuntu, and people using meta-syntheses of approaches and practices and religious practices such as a Christian ethical/moral approach to parental and school discipline. They draw on their insights into postcolonialism, the impact of indigenous knowledge, theories of agency, dysfunctionality and school underperformance. The book offers an intriguing depiction of opposing views on discipline.

The argumentative point of departure of this scholarly book is the common conviction of specialists in the field of education in South Africa that the national education system is not at a satisfactory level – in both the academic and the public discourse. Such allegations are made and, frequently, stronger adjectives than ‘non-satisfactory’ are used. Results of international test series in which South Africa has participated, such as the 2015 TIMSS tests, confirm the negative verdicts found in the (public and scholarly) discourse. This book aims to argue that although the lack of performance could be attributed to a multiplicity of factors, one factor that can make a difference in the achievement levels obtained by learners in schools is leadership. The book demonstrates that a particular problem of both the scholarly and the public discourse on education in South Africa is an overtone of defeatism or resignation, blaming all ills in the education system and educational institutions on historical legacies and/or contextual factors (such as socio-economic deprivation in the catchment areas of schools) or poor resources and infrastructure. This collected work was inspired by a recently published spate of articles on top-performing schools (including top-performing schools in rural communities), in which it was demonstrated that good leadership can overcome such contextual and other challenges. The book unpacks the issue of leadership in South African schools from a variety of perspectives, thus contributing to the development of the scholarly discourse on Educational Leadership in South Africa. The target audience of the book is scholars of Educational Leadership. The research reported in the chapters draw on a wide range of methodologies, including empirical (survey) research (questionnaires and interviews), critical literature surveys, and the comparative method.

The thesis of this volume is that the fields of scholarly enquiry of Education — internationally as well as in South Africa in particular — despite being fields of virile scholarly activity and output, are in need of a major overhaul. In this collected work this want in research is encapsulated in three words: relevance, rigour and restructuring. Research in the scholarly field(s) of Education is predominantly of small scale, non-accumulative, widely condemned as not of a comparable standard to research done in other social sciences, much less upon a par with research in the natural sciences, and lacking structure in the sense of being anchored in a firm theory. To make matters worse, scholars in Education internationally and in South Africa have till very recently eschewed discussion as to the packaging or structuring of knowledge produced by Education research. The book consists of chapters containing original research unpacking these desiderata from a variety of angles. The authors had them served by a variety of methods, from deductively argued position papers, to empirical research, the latter both quantitative (survey research) and qualitative.

The focus of this publication is on answering the central research question: How can Human Rights be advanced with regard to different kinds of diversities, and in different educational settings? The publication pays special attention to the advancement of human rights in a variety of education-related contexts, in keeping with human rights as a declared national priority for both society at large and the education system. One strategic priority of the Faculty of Education is research based on market requirements and needs. This book strives towards meeting this expectation by directly aiming at building human rights and social justice in the South African society, public schools and higher education institutions. Adjudication in the education context of the constitutional values of dignity, equality and freedom focusses regularly on learners. The book highlights the value of education for full-fledged citizenship by delineating what schooling should entail to inspire learners towards both claiming equal freedoms and rights and taking accountability for the responsibilities attached to citizenship.

This book is a collection of chapters based on original research dealing with issues of discipline and disciplinary practices in educational institutions. The aim of the book is to provide a scholarly and scientific perspective on the current state of discipline and disciplinary practices in schools and tertiary education settings. The issue of discipline is investigated from diverse paradigmatic and methodological perspectives, presenting empirical as well as also philosophical research. The empirical perspective includes quantitative (positivistic), qualitative (interpretive) and mixed methods (pragmatic), designs and worldviews. This book offers a ground-breaking contribution to the field of learner and student discipline, with insights into disciplinary practices and issues in educational institutions not hitherto researched, such as Technical Vocational Education and Training colleges and universities.